Skyler Hedblom
Skyler Hedblom
This site is new and still taking shape – thanks for your patience as more pages and links are added!
Who I Am
I’m a Boston-based musician, raised in California’s Bay Area and educated in the Pacific Northwest. My work and love spans composition, percussion, performance librarianship, and engraving, and I’m drawn to music that brings people together – on stage, in the audience, behind the scenes, and everywhere in between.
Learn more about my work at the links about, or feel free to get in touch!
Featured Compositions
Program Notes:
Sonata for Flute and Piano traces a journey shaped by curiosity, longing, and acceptance. It opens with a gentle, searching voice – introspective and warm, yet unsettled. As the music unfolds, that yearning gives way to lighter, more playful gestures, full of energy and optimism, yet also hesitant and testing.
Tension and complexity slowly build as these contrasting impulses overlap and collide. Moments of confidence are interrupted by uncertainty, and forward motion is repeatedly questioned, redirected, and tried again. Rather than offering easy answers, the music leans into that instability, allowing the emotional weight to deepen through rich harmonies and textures.
In its final stretch, the sonata gathers its momentum into a continuous and determined flow – less a resolution born of certainty, but rather growth. What emerges is an affirmation of experience itself: the courage to explore fueled by love, to be pushed back, and to continue forward anyway. The piece ultimately embraces the beauty of what is, finding joy and meaning not in arrival, but in the act of moving through uncertainty together.
Duration: 7.5 minutes
Composed Fall of 2023
Hymns Renewed bridges the ancient and the modern, blending some of the earliest known Greek melodies with contemporary extended techniques for flute, cello, and tam-tam. The piece draws from Petros Tabouris' reconstructions of the Hymn to the Muse and Hymn to Calliope and Apollo, borrowing these melodies and placing them in a new context.
The work's symmetrical form reflects themes of memory and transformation. The first two movements, Hymn to the Muse I and Hymn to Calliope and Apollo I, introduce the primary melodies with contrasting characters. The structure then turns inward: Hymn to Mnemosyne I recalls an earlier theme, referencing the Greek goddess of memory. At the center, Khaos - named for the primordial god of chaos - disrupts the balance with intense, unrelenting force. The symmetry then unfolds in reverse: Hymn to Mnemosyne II restores the earlier hymns, while Hymn to the Muse II and Hymn to Calliope and Apollo II return with swapped styles.
Instrumentation:
Flute
Cello
Tam-Tam
Duration: ~11 minutes
Composed Spring 2024
Marche d’un petit diable grew out of a vivid, humorous image: the massive gates of Hell groaning open with dramatic weight, only for a tiny baby devil to march out with great self-importance. That contradiction set the tone for the entire piece, which mixes a Shostakovich-ian with the pageantry of Sousa. Listeners can imagine the little devil proudly strutting around, trying to command respect, only to get sidetracked, flustered, or even a bit tired. The music shifts between pompous, playful, and darkly humorous moments, capturing the character’s mischievous nature.
Instrumentation:
Alto Saxophone in Eb
Trumpet in Bb (with cup & harmon mute)
Violin
Cello
Contrabass
Xylophone
Percussion (snare drum, triangle, med-high woodblock)
Listen to Marche d’un petit diable here!
Duration: 8.5 minutes
Composed Fall of 2024
Contact
Interested in working together? Any questions arise? Feel like saying hi? Fill out this form and I’ll respond as soon I am able!